


In the Midst of Ruin

by perfectlystill



Category: The Skeleton Twins (2014)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Milo pulls her out of the pool. Therein lies the problem, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Midst of Ruin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3pipeproblem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3pipeproblem/gifts).



Milo pulls her out of the pool.

Therein lies the problem, really. It sounds better if you say _Milo pulls her out of the lake_. But he doesn't, because Maggie doesn't try to drown herself in a lake. 

A pool is clean and suburban. It smells like chlorine and the lights at the bottom make her squint. A pool is not romantic or passionate or anything a Victorian author would want to write about. 

Maggie makes it a metaphor for her own life: she wishes it were romantic and passionate; instead, it is sterilized.

Maggie should stop making metaphors about her life. 

 

 

Milo stays with her after. 

"Jesus Maggie," he says when she gets out of the shower -- she had to wash the chlorine off her skin and out of her hair. The smell makes her nauseous. "You were in there for almost 45 minutes. I thought maybe you'd tried drowning yourself in the bathtub." 

She blinks and half of her mouth upturns. "I'm glad this is funny to you."

"Humor is a coping mechanism." He's lying on the sofa, knees bent and feet on the arm. He's still wearing his shoes. Maggie thinks about telling him to take them off, that he's going to get little dirt particles into the fabric and she's going to have to rent out one of those fancy professional vacuums to clean it properly. "I think you need to laugh more."

"Well." She swallows. "Okay."

 

 

They go to an open mic night and order the fruitiest drinks on the menu. There are little umbrellas in them: Milo's is pink and Maggie's is green. 

"You should go up there," she says, pointing at the stage with her thumb. 

He raises one eyebrow and tilts his head to look down at her. They're both sitting across from each other in the booth, but he's still looking down at her. Logically, Maggie knows it's because he's tall. Sometimes she likes logic. She knows that she has clung onto it when she shouldn't have: the safe job, the safe home with the safe mortgage, the safe husband. But now it feels okay. She also knows she likes to think of herself as the Good Twin, that maybe she is above her brother because she took the safe job and had the safe home with the safe mortgage and married the safe husband. Maggie is not going to think about that now, is not going to think about how the things that make her feel good about herself are also the things that make her want to stop existing.

"Please. Not with these wannabe comedians and professional acoustic song coverers," Milo responds.

She shrugs. "You're funny. You're an actor."

He presses his mouth into a thin, straight line. "Which is why I shouldn't offer these people a free performance."

"Are you sacred?" She cocks her head to the side before taking a long, loud slurp of her daiquiri. 

"No."

"You are."

"I'm not scared." He waves his hand around, aiming for flippant, she's sure. But his voice is a little louder and a little harder.

She's not going to push it. "Fine."

"Fine," he says. 

 

 

"Do you miss him?" Milo asks one night while they're watching television. He doesn't even wait for a commercial.

"Who?" Maggie asks, even though she knows. 

"Lance."

She breathes in and out, steady. "Yes." She watches two people on the show they're watching have a conversation about something trivial. It's the kind of show where everyone's problems would be solved if they just talked to each other. "Do you miss him?" she asks. 

"Who?"

"Rich Levitt."

He exhales, audibly shaky. "Yes," he whispers, like he's afraid she is going to yell at him.

"Okay."

She could tell Milo that she is always going to hate Rich Levitt -- cannot bring herself to think of him without the last name. She is always going to know that she was right about him. She wants to, can feel the words curling on her tongue, self-righteous and indignant. She bites them back, though. He did not tell her that she fucked up her own marriage for no good reason when she admitted to missing her husband. He did not tell her that she doesn't deserve to miss him at all, even though Maggie thinks that is true, too.

If he can afford her that kindness, she will bite her tongue and do the same. 

 

 

Some days Milo comes home smelling like whiskey and smoke. 

On those days Maggie either doesn't say anything and acts like everything is fine -- she is good at this, her smile is stiff but she has had practice pretending that nothing is wrong, and she can hold a stiff, small smile for a long time, for days, even -- or she will ask him if he's okay. If she does the latter because she is feeling particularly tired or caring or _something_ she can't quite pinpoint, he will tell her he's fine, exasperation almost as strong as the alcohol on his breath. He will roll his eyes, probably. If Maggie is good at smiling, then Milo is good at rolling his eyes.

She never yells. 

Maggie is afraid that if she yells, more awful, terrible things will slip out of her mouth. Sometimes she thinks Milo needs to hear them, but she doesn't want to hear the awful, terrible things he will say about her in return. 

Maybe this is weakness. Maggie prefers to think of it as survival.

 

 

They decorate the fake Christmas tree Milo buys at the supermarket. Lance always used to make her put on a scarf and mittens, and then he'd drag her 45 minutes outside of town to the Christmas tree farm. He would walk ahead of her, row after row, until he found one he deemed big enough and suitable enough to chop down and take home. She hated the way pine needles would litter the floor, but she loved the smell. She tells Milo while he's playing _All I want for Christmas is You_ and _Last Christmas_ on a loop, shimmying his hips.

He scrunches his nose. "That's a lot of work. Also I think he picked up the ax when he took the last of his stuff."

"Probably." She takes an old ornament out of the box. It's a tin foil tree, colored in with marker. It's bent and old and her name is on the back: _Maggie, Age 5_. "What would I do with an ax, anyway?"

Milo drops his voice: "Commit murder."

Maggie hums a little. "I think we'd be good at it."

"The best," he agrees. "We missed our true calling as twin serial killers."

When she hands him the ornament to put on the tree he smooths it out and turns it over. "Did I make one of these?"

"Probably." Maggie shrugs. "It's probably packed in a box Mom has."

"She might have thrown it away."

"You can have that one, if you want."

The tinkling of _All I want for Christmas is You_ starts up again. Milo smirks. "This ugly thing? No. You can keep it." He hangs it up in the center of the tree, right across from the sofa.

A few days later he's got a pine-scented candle burning in the living room. All Maggie says is: "Smells nice in here."

 

 

"The thing is I can get out of bed. I think about what I have to do and I get out of bed. But I don't want to. Getting out of bed is the easy part. It's everything after that I hate." Milo moves his spoon around his cereal bowl. The sun is bright behind him and Maggie has to squint, use her hand as a visor to see.

"Me too," Maggie says. "That's why I don't want to get out of bed. Because it means I'm strong enough to do the rest of it."

"What if we just lie in bed all day together. Does that make it more acceptable?"

Maggie smiles. "You're an idiot."

Milo slaps his hand over his chest. "Rude."

Her smiles grows.

She feels so tired.

"It would be like us," Milo says. "We can't even be depressed right."

 

 

She gets the divorce papers a week after New Years. 

It is nice of Lance to wait, letting the holidays pass before sending them. Maggie never liked the holidays much to begin with, and she thinks the waiting was worse, but it was nice of him.

She cries in the bathtub, empty bottle of wine rolled against the base of the toliet. There's a layer of dust in its crevices and she needs to clean the bathroom.

She thinks about drowning in the tub, takes a deep breath and submerges herself under water.

Her lungs feel like they're collapsing and she pushes herself up too fast. Water splashes over the edges and she brushes her bangs out of her eyes, gasping for air.

Maggie knows her body wouldn't let her die like that, but she doesn't think she wants to die like that, either.

 _Girl Drowns in her Own Bathtub_ is not as romantic a headline for the small town newspaper as _Girl Drowns in a Lake_.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! I know you were interested in some of the aftermath of the film, so I tried to give a little insight into that without glossing over anything and tying the story up into a neat little bow. I hope you like it and have a good holiday.


End file.
